Anyone who loves “Hamlet” knows how dangerously close it comes to
parody.

Why, if some renegade writers (say, for instance, Daniel Flint, Frank
Lawler and Jason Man of Seattle’s One Lump or Two Productions) wanted to
turn a masterpiece into a lurid, tabloid-style melodrama — could anyone
stop them?

Certainly not the audience for “The Elsinore Diaries.” We were too busy
laughing.

These gents have taken Shakespeare’s most complex tragedy and
re-imagined almost every character. It all ends the same — with death all
around — but nobody except the almost-great Dane (Jason Man) acts quite
like you’d expect. Take Ophelia (Jaime Roberts): The girl is about as
fragile as rebar. And Gertrude (Jill Snyder): Here’s a Queen who is more
in love with her wine selections than her son or her new husband Claudius
(Frank Lawler), a man who has definitely left his intelligence in another
room. Watch scheming Polonius (Daniel Flint) play this usurper King like a
trout on a line.

The show would be much funnier if it were trimmed to an hour, but then
we’d miss some of Sarah Mosher’s terrific costumes, the existential
laments of the Player. King (Lantz Wagner) and those pirates (Cohn McKenna
and Sam Wilson).